Authoring Tools, Including Content-Driven Treetables, for Fluid Text

1. A method of laying out and displaying, on a display, content-driven treetables having at least one cell, comprising: determining a total number of characters contained in each cell, each cell being a subtree headed by a node; assigning an initial width to the treetable as a whole, the initial width of the treetable being a width of a cell representing a root of the treetable; assigning an initial width to a child cell representing a child node of the treetable, as a proportion of a width assigned to a parent cell representing a parent node of the child node, which proportion is based on the number of characters in the subtree headed by the child node, relative to a total number of characters in all subtrees headed by nodes of children of the child node's parent node, wherein at least one of a plurality of child cells having a same parent cell has a height and width that is different from another of the plurality of child cells having the same parent cell; wherein a first child cell of the plurality of child cells having the same parent cell of the treetable has a first content, and a second child cell of the plurality of child cells having the same parent cell has a second content that is larger in size than the first content by a content size difference, the second child cell having the height or width that is larger than the height or width of the first child cell to accommodate the content size difference; determining a modified number of characters associated with each node as an approximate area of a rectangular cell needed to accommodate the content of that node by the width assignment; and adjusting the initial cell widths based on (a) re-computing an amount of content in each cell of the content-driven treetables to account for unused white space in the cells of the content-driven treetables based on the initial cell widths and then (b) reallocating the widths by proportional assignment as above, using the recomputed amount of content.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising: obtaining modified subtree character counts for each subtree; obtaining modified widths for each child cell associated with a non-root node, as a proportion of the modified width assigned to the parent cell representing the parent node of the child node, which proportion is based on the above modified number of characters in the subtree headed by the child node, relative to the total modified number of characters in all subtrees headed by the nodes of the children of the child node's parent node; and assigning a final cell width and height to each child node.

3. A method of generating and displaying, on a display, tree-structured data, including alternative narratives structured as root-to-leaf paths in a tree, in a content-driven treetable format, comprising: generating and displaying a table which contains a plurality of columns composed of cells, wherein each cell represents a node of the tree, and contains content associated with that node, and each column represents a single path from the root of the represented tree to a leaf of the represented tree; wherein at least one of a plurality of child cells having a same parent cell has a height and width that is different from another of the plurality of child cells having the same parent cell; and wherein a first child cell of the plurality of child cells having the same parent cell of the treetable has a first content, and a second child cell of the plurality of child cells having the same parent cell has a second content that is larger in size than the first content by a content size difference, the second child cell having the height or width that is larger than the height or width of the first child cell to accommodate the content size difference; and adjusting the initial cell widths based on (a) re-computing an amount of content in each cell of the content-driven treetables format to account for unused white space in the cells of the content-driven treetables format based on the initial cell widths and then (b) reallocating the widths by proportional assignment as above, using the recomputed amount of content.

4. The method of claim 3 , wherein each cell which represents a parent node in the above tree is located immediately above, and exactly spans, the child cells representing child nodes of that parent node, but those child cells may have different heights.

5. The method of claim 3 , further comprising undoing or removing a cell to return to a prior display of the table.

6. A method of laying out and displaying, on a display, taxonomy-based content-driven treetables having tree-node-associated cells representing nodes of a tree; comprising: determining a total number of characters as a content amount contained in each tree-node-associated cell; assigning an initial width to the treetable as a whole, which is also the initial width of a cell representing a root node of the tree; assigning an initial width to each other tree-node-associated cell of the treetable based on the proportion of the content amount in a tree-node associated cell having a parent cell, relative to the content amount associated with other tree-node associated cells having the parent cell of the tree-node-associated cell; wherein at least one of the tree-node-associated cells having the parent cell has a height and width that is different from another of the tree-node-associated cells having the parent cell; wherein a first tree-node-associated cell of the tree-node-associated cells having the same parent cell has a first content, and a second tree-node-associated cell of the tree-node-associated cells having the same parent cell has a second content that is larger in size than the first content by a content size difference, the second tree-node-associated cell having the height or width that is larger than the height or width of the first tree-node-associated cell to accommodate the content size difference; and adjusting the initial cell widths based on (a) re-computing an amount of content in each tree-node-associated cell to account for unused white space in the tree-node-associated cells based on the initial cell widths and then (b) reallocating the widths by proportional assignment as above, using the recomputed amount of content.

7. The method of claim 6 , further comprising setting an initial height of each cell to accommodate the content of each cell.

8. A method of comparing a plurality of alternative paths in a treetable, comprising: displaying, on a display, the entire structure of the treetable and of each alternative path in a single table with a plurality of cells in a column and row format; wherein at least one child cell of the plurality of cells has a same parent cell and has a height and width that is different from another child cell of the plurality of cells that has the same parent cell; and wherein a first child cell of the plurality of cells having the same parent cell of the treetable has a first content, and a second child cell of the plurality of cells having the same parent cell has a second content that is larger in size than the first content by a content size difference, the second child cell having the height or width that is larger than the height or width of the first child cell to accommodate the content size difference; and adjusting the initial cell widths based on (a) re-computing an amount of content in each cell of the treetable to account for unused white space in the cells of the treetable based on the initial cell widths and then (b) reallocating the widths by proportional assignment as above, using the recomputed amount of content.

9. The method of claim 8 , further comprising providing different cell heights across a row, resulting in unaligned treetables.

10. The method of claim 9 , further comprising adjusting the height of at least one cell to reduce the amount of open space in the cell.